Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman "other" or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space . . .

Deconstruction. . . insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.

All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place . . .

Chaucer was a class traitorShakespeare hated the mobDonne sold out a bit laterSidney was a nob.

Published Sources for
the above Quotations:

F:

Against The Grain, ch. 13, "The Revolt of the Reader" (1986; first published 1982).

R:

Literary Theory: An Introduction, "What Is Literature?" (1983), of the Russian Formalists' view of "the literary."

A:

Against The Grain, ch. 6, "Frère Jacques: The Politics of Deconstruction" (1986; first published 1984).

N:

Against The Grain, ch. 10, "The Critic as Clown" (1986).

K:

Against The Grain, ch. 14, "The Ballad of English Literature" (1986; to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory).